A video circulating on social media from Cook County, Illinois, featured a voter claiming a voting machine warned her about the popularity of a candidate she selected.
“One of the questions was about the judges, and I picked the Republican judges,” the voter stated in a TikTok video that has since been taken down, though copies continue to circulate online. “And once I selected one of the judges, I got a notification on the bar that said, ‘People are not typically choosing this person!’”
According to the woman, the warning vanished once she completed three selections for that contest, prompting her to question why the system was commenting on her choices.
The clip was amplified by prominent X accounts like Wall Street Apes and Catturd, pulling in over a million views and fueling accusations of electoral manipulation.
“According to the Illinois State Board of Elections’ Voting Systems Equipment Log, Dominion is listed as both the equipment vendor and support vendor for their voting machines and has their contract,” noted the caption on the Wall Street X post, which reached 1.4 million views. “It’s RIGGED.”
Local election authorities pushed back against these allegations, clarifying that voting hardware cannot evaluate or report on candidate popularity. Instead, the systems are designed to issue alerts when a voter fails to fill out every available position in a given race—a standard procedure known as flagging an undervote.
Systems alert voters to incomplete selections
The individual in the video identified herself as an early voter residing in Streamwood, Cook County.
Although she claimed to have voted for Republican judges, Sally Daly, the Cook County Clerk’s deputy clerk of communications, pointed out that no Republican judicial candidates appeared on that ballot.
The voter later walked back that specific detail in a follow-up video, admitting she had referenced the wrong contest by mistake, though she stood by her claim that a warning message had appeared.
Cook County Clerk Monica Gordon firmly rejected the voter’s description of the notification, labeling the claims as false and misleading.
“Voting equipment does not tell voters which candidates are more popular, nor does it discourage voters from selecting any particular candidate,” Gordon stated. “The equipment may display a notification if a voter leaves a contest blank or does not make all available selections (an undervote).”
To illustrate how the system functions, the clerk’s office provided an example of the actual prompt, which displays the text, “This contest is undervoted!” when a voter submits fewer choices than permitted.
Gordon explained that this feature is meant to help individuals review their choices before final submission, emphasizing that voters retain the right to leave any race completely blank.
“This is the only report of this type that has been brought to the Clerk’s Office attention in a jurisdiction with nearly 1.8 million registered voters,” Daly added.
Streamwood Village Clerk Aris Garcia, a Republican, also weighed in via a public statement, noting: “We have attempted to recreate the reported message and were unable to reproduce the experience described.”
Federal standards mandate undervote alerts
Cook County relies on the ImageCast X ballot marking device produced by Dominion Voting Systems, a company later acquired by Liberty Vote—founded by former Republican election official Scott Leiendecker. Dominion has frequently been the target of unverified fraud accusations promoted by Donald Trump and his allies.
When contacted, Liberty Vote directed inquiries back to Gordon’s official remarks.
Certified voting machines are universally programmed to flag instances where voters pick either too many or too few candidates.
“This is generally referred to as ‘second chance voting’ because it provides a voter a second chance to correct a potential mistake before casting and counting the ballot,” explained Ryan Macias, a cybersecurity and election technology specialist who served in federal roles across the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 established that federal election systems must let voters review and fix mistakes before their ballots are finalized, including warnings for overvotes (selecting too many candidates).
Furthermore, voluntary guidelines issued in 2005 by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission mandated that systems must “indicate to the voter when no selection, or an insufficient number of selections, has been made for a contest (e.g., undervotes)” and alert them if they exceed the maximum allowable selections.
According to Macias, these requirements directly apply to hardware like the ImageCast X.
Because numerous states and the District of Columbia incorporate elements of these federal guidelines, equipment manufacturers naturally align their technology with these benchmarks.
Our ruling
Viral posts claimed that a voter’s encounter with a warning screen on a Cook County voting machine serves as proof that the election is compromised.
Local election administrators refuted the assertion that machines comment on candidate popularity. Instead, the equipment is purposely configured to notify voters when a race has been undervoted—a standard safety feature required by federal regulations to prevent accidental omissions.
The incident offers no proof of election tampering.
We rate this claim Pants on Fire!